Multimedia Glitches: Prepare for the worst!

-Prepare for glitches. They will happen. Roll with it. Here are some ideas about sharing multimedia with an audience:

 1. Take into account that equipment differs. If you are going to be traveling with your presentation, you might want to make a few versions. Think resolution, audio, and format. What is the most universal format for sharing? The nice thing about most modern movie making software is that it will convert for youtube. But when you want to show your video on a big screen, you might want a higher quality version. 16:9 or 4:3? 1080p or 720i? What resolution is your monitor? What resolution is the projector you’re using? Mirror or extended display?

2. Know your display settings and how to change them. Most problems when connecting to a projector can be rectified via the display preference tool.

3. Know your adapters. With new computers come new adapters for connecting to monitors. I imagine a world where we will one day have a universal adapter, and maybe Thunderbolt will take us there, but until then, we will have to use different adapters for different machines. As long as you know your machine and your adapter, you’ll be okay for the most part. But be prepared for anything if you have to share your multimedia presentations.

4. Audio is more important than video. This may sound counter-intuitive, but people will forgive video glitches as long as they aren’t too jarring or uncomfortable. But audio glitches distract and detract. Poor quality audio can make a multimedia presentation unwatchable. When using images, make sure the images are high resolution so they aren’t grainy. Keep the aspect ratio the same as the original if you resize the image.

 5. iMovie adds all kinds of effects that are the default. The most annoying of these is the Ken Burns effect. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Ken Burns, but to assume that every picture needs the dramatic slow zoom effect is a bit much. Every time you add a picture, it automatically adds a zoom effect onto the image. Sometimes this is nice, but if you just want people to look at your images, it can be distracting and after a few of these images, it is a tiresome effect. It can be especially annoying when the auto zoom zooms in on something you didn’t want to focus on in the first place. iMovie will do this with titles and other artifacts as well. You do have control over these options, the trick is to know the option-click trick to bring these options up.

6. Power up. Bring a power cable. Don’t assume that your battery life will last.

7. Remember the old adage… if something can go wrong it will. The best you can do is to cover as many bases as possible so that if something does go wrong, you can deal with it. If all else fails, ask for help!